Hebrews Lesson 68
NKJ Matthew
We are in Hebrews, but we won’t be there for long.
So let’s orient again. Hebrews 6:7-8 has this illustration
about the fruitfulness of the believer and we have to understand what the Bible
means when it talks about the fruitfulness of the believer and why fruitfulness
is important. We have to understand what it is and what it isn’t, what it
is good for and what it is not good for. God did not call us to be
fruit inspectors, but to be students of the Word abiding in Him so that He can
produce fruit in us. So we have an illustration in Hebrews 6.
Hebrews 6:7-8 is in the midst of a section dealing
with a warning passage against believers who have completely fallen away or on
the verge of completely falling away and how dangerous that is. Then
there is this illustration.
NKJ Hebrews 6:7 For the earth which drinks in the
rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is
cultivated, receives blessing from God;
NKJ Hebrews 6:8 but if it bears thorns and briars, it
is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.
The focus is on two things - fruit production (or the
production of the plant) and the end results (blessing or cursing both in time
and eternity). We have looked at the symbols there and seen that the
earth is the believer. The rain represents the provision of God – the
Word of God and the Spirit of God. The herbs represent the production of
good fruit or divine good that has eternal quality to it. The thorns and
thistles are the production of evil, sin and human good. The cultivator
is God. God is the one ultimately producing the fruit. It is not
ourselves. It is not our own efforts that produce the fruit.
We are to be in right relationship with God the Holy Spirit. We are to be
walking with the Spirit, abiding in Christ, dependent upon the Word of God, taking
in the Word of God, applying the Word of God. When we are doing that,
then it is the Holy Spirit who takes that in an unseen invisible way and He
produces growth and maturity in us leading to the production of fruit. So
we are going through the passages. Now these passages are all important
because we have to recognize that the Word of God doesn’t tell us everything
there is to say about any particular topic or subject or doctrine in any one
verse. So we take different key passages where some was revealed here,
some was revealed there, and some more was revealed over there We
start putting these together to create a clear understanding of the
entirety of doctrine. So we move from Hebrews 6:7 to begin our study in
John 15:1-6.
In John 15 we saw that there were three types of
branches. There is the non-fruit bearing branches that were to be lifted
up. That is the corrected translation – not cut off, but lifted up.
These represent young believers that are nurtured so that they can produce
fruit in coming years as they mature. Then there were the fruit bearing
branches that were pruned for greater fruit production. This represents
discipline in the positive sense of the word, not discipline in the sense of
punitive punishment. (That’s kind of redundant isn’t it?) It is not
punitive discipline. It is productive discipline, teaching us to be
disciplined in the Christian life and to do away with that which is not
productive. Then the third was the non abiding branches which were
pruned, completely removed, discarded as useless which is a picture of divine
discipline on the believer in time even to the extent of the sin unto
death.
We saw secondly that the goal in John 15 is fruit
production. The believer is to abide. Some 6 times that word is
used – to abide. Several times the word fruit is used.
That is the goal – fruit production.
NKJ John 15:8 "By this My Father is
glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
So you will become. That is in the process of
becoming something that you weren’t before. We saw that there were truly
three different stages of fruit production mentioned there - those who bore
fruit, those who produced more fruit, and those who bore much fruit. We see the
same kind of thing in Matthew 13 which we will look at a little more this
evening. Believers produce fruit in different levels.
So the goal is fruit production. The third thing
we saw is that the sole and necessary condition for fruit production is abiding
in John 15. You have to abide in Christ.
NKJ John 15:7 "If you abide in Me, and My
words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
There is doctrine.
It’s not just a feel good thing. It is not a
subjective or psychological thing. It is based upon the Word of God
comprehended, studied, understood. You can’t believe what you don’t
understand. You can’t understand what you haven’t thought about.
That is why the Old Testament talked about meditation all the time.
Furthermore we learned from this that this (the fourth
point) abiding is not some subjective or psychological state; but is related to
doctrine in the believer - leading to the fifth point that abiding is not
simply a positional reality or and abstract doctrine. It is manifest in
an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ as indicated through prayer.
There is the two-way communication. God speaks to us through His Word.
We speak to God in prayer. It is two people as it were - two
persons. God is a person. He has the ability to communicate.
We are people. We are designed for fellowship for intimacy with
God. The term abide emphasizes this intimate ongoing relationship of the
believer. The relationship as I have said already isn’t based on subjective
impressions or subjective criterion of having a close walk with Jesus or
feeling like you are closer to Jesus because you have sung a lot of Christian
choruses and everybody had a good time standing up and stomping their feet and
clapping their hands and swaying to the music and enjoying the beat. But
it is because you follow clear markers in Scripture to indicate you are abiding
in Christ.
NKJ John
If we disobey, we are not abiding in His love. Are we
out of the family now? No. Are we in the wood shed?
Yes. That is such an old saying. There has got to be something new,
but I don’t think that parents today discipline kids. So I don’t know
what the contemporary idiom would be. Are you having a time out?
Somehow it just doesn’t communicate, does it? You sinned and you are
going to have a spiritual time out. It just doesn’t work. You see
God built theses things into the whole framework. You have got to have
corporal discipline.
If you don’t keep His commandments, you don’t abide in
His love. You have to know the commandments to keep them. You have
to come to Bible class to learn them. You have to study the Word, read
the Word, know what they are, and be reminded of them. It doesn’t just
happen.
The overriding mandate throughout this whole section
and I have pointed out is love. Jesus gave us the commandment that
we are to love one another…
NKJ John
That was based on the new commandment in John
13:34-35. Love is not marked by feelings, not by emotion, not by feelings
of warmth and rapport; but by objective standards of doing what the Word of God
says to do. People can get legalistic about it and they can be doing what
the Word of God says to do and there is no relationship. You have to be
careful not to go too far to the other extreme. Love is measured by
keeping the commandments. This leads to the production of fruit. As
I have said already the sole and necessary condition to produce fruit in John
15 is abiding in Christ.
Now we go to Galatians 5 which tells what the fruit of
the Spirit is. This is a comprehensive list but it is not an exhaustive
list.
NKJ Galatians
NKJ Galatians
That means it gives us a lot but it doesn’t tell us
everything there is to say about fruit. But what I want you to notice as
we go through this study tonight is that fruit in the Bible is character.
It is the virtues of the Christian life. It is not external
behavior. It is not witnessing. If you grow up in some Christian
contexts fruit is pretty much defined as how many people you witnessed to this
week – how many people you lead to the Lord. If you didn’t lead 5 people
to the Lord this week, you aren’t producing any fruit. But when we go
through the Scripture that’s not really how the Bible uses the term fruit in
relation to the Christian life. It’s character
transformation. Again and again and again it has to do with what happens
on the inside as God the Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and uses it in the
soul of the believer to produce the character of Jesus Christ.
So we went from John 15 to Luke 8 last time. We
went to Luke 8. That was the parable of the soils. Just to give you
a brief review to help you get it back in your head, we had the story of the
sower who comes along and casts the seed. The seed represents message of
the gospel of the
But it fails under temptation.
Then we have the second kind of soil, where the seed
falls amongst the thorns. Again it is choked out but for the seed to be
choked out there has to be germination and some growth. Then it is choked
out. This is choked out by the details of life – distractions. This
represents the person who receives the message of the kingdom but there is some
growth but not much growth. There is no fruit production because it
is choked out by the thorns. There are too many distractions in life and
this is the person who never gets very far in his spiritual growth. Then
it is the last soil where we have fruit produced.
What makes the difference is the kind of soil.
The message is, what kind of soil are you? In other words, what is your
volition toward the Word of God? That makes the difference. Now
what I want to do before we go on (I keep threatening that we will go to
Ephesians 5, but I keep finding other passages to go to.) Let’s go to
Matthew 13. I just want to point out a couple of things here. You
may not realize it. Some of you do because you have been around
awhile. Many of these passages that I am talking about are also at the
heart of the debate that goes back and forth over the nature of gospel, assurance
of salvation, and what is known as the debate between the free grace gospel
verses Lordship salvation.
Lordship salvation in essence says that the way you
know you are saved is because of the fruit that comes out in your life.
Of course all of these passages that deal with fruit would come to play in that
debate. Their argument is if you want to know if you are really saved, if
there has been regeneration that has taken place,it’s
going to produce fruit in your life. If you don’t see the fruit, then you
weren’t truly saved. You weren’t genuinely saved. You didn’t have
saving faith.
On the other hand the free grace gospel says, “No we
have to make a distinction between justification which happens when you
believed and received the gospel and sanctification which is the spiritual
life.”
This debate goes back a long time into history.
It has taken different forms in different groups. I think I pointed this
out before that at the time of the Reformation beginning in 1517 and in those
early years, Luther did not grasp justification by faith alone in all the ways
he did a little later on, right at first. But he was close. Those
of you who go shooting catch the metaphor. He was on the paper.
He might not have been in the bull’s eye or on the black but he was at
least on the paper. He had a young sharp student by the name of Philllip Melangthon who was
really the man who formulated and systematized Luther’s theology. Melangthon had a crisp clear understanding of the doctrine
of justification by faith alone. At the instant of faith in Christ we
received Christ’s righteousness and God imputes that righteousness to us. On
the basis of the possession of Christ’s righteousness we are declared just by
God. It is not that we are just. It is not “just as if I never
sinned” which you will hear some people express. It is on the basis of
the possession of Christ’s righteousness that you are declared
righteousness. It is not that you are made righteous. That is an
important distinction.
In Roman Catholic theology there is this confusion
between justification by faith and sanctification so that justification is the
process of being made righteous. So in Roman Catholic theology
justification isn’t a point in time a slice of a nanosecond when all of those
things happen that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to you. God the
Father looks on that righteousness and declares you to be righteous because you
have received Christ’s righteousness - justification by faith alone. When
we talk about sanctification and spiritual growth that’s what Roman Catholics
mean by justification. You see they have confused that. For them
justification is a process. How do you know you are justified?
Because you look at the morality in your life and the religion in your life and
the good works in your life. If that’s not there, then you need to go get
some more grace. After Luther and then later Calvin began to teach a true
crisp unadulterated doctrine of justification by faith alone, the reaction from
the Roman Catholic Church was that if you teach these things - that all a
person has to do is trust in Christ to be saved and they will be saved and they
can’t lose it - then what is it to encourage them to be moral and law-abiding
and to be good people. You have just taken away all of the
motivation for that. You have to load them up with guilt.
When I was in
So by the end of his career a guy whose name is Dave
Anderson who pastors is very good in this area. Dave has done some
tremendous work. In this he shows in an article published in the GES a
few years ago how in Calvin’s later editions of his institutes (which is what
we have published today) that he goes through a change. He begins to try
to answer this objection from the Roman Catholics and he slips into lordship
view of perseverance of the saints - that if you don’t show fruit you weren’t
really saved. That begins to develop within Calvin’s thought and later it
entered into reform theology and it’s been this debate that has gone on down
through the centuries. Is a person purely and simply saved by faith alone
in Christ alone? If they believed the gospel such that they truly understand
the propositions that Christ died for their sins they understand that they
can’t do anything for their salvation. They understand that Christ paid
it all. All they have to do is receive it as a gift, believe in Christ, accept
His substitutionary death for them and that is all they need to do to be saved,
that if they live like the devil for the rest of their lives, are they still
saved? If the answer to that is yes, you understand grace. But if
the answer to that is no, then you are starting to muddy the water a little bit
and you are confusing fruit production with germination and the beginning of
the plant. That is what we are really dealing with here. Matthew 13
– the parable of the soils and Luke 8 are parallel passages and that is where
you get into a lot of the debate. But I wanted to come back to this and
point out something that I think we need to pay attention to.
In Matthew 13 just like in Luke you have four
responses to the gospel message. The parable begins in verse 3.
NKJ Matthew 13:3 Then He spoke many things to them
in parables, saying: "Behold, a sower went out to sow.
NKJ Matthew 13:4 "And as he sowed, some seed
fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.
NKJ Matthew 13:5 "Some fell on stony places,
where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they
had no depth of earth.
See there is life. There is germination. There
is some growth - a little bit.
NKJ Matthew 13:6 "But when the sun was up they
were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.
NKJ Matthew 13:7 "And some fell among thorns,
and the thorns sprang up and choked them.
NKJ Matthew 13:8 "But others fell on good
ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
That’s comparable to John 15 – fruit, more fruit and
much fruit. There are different percentages of fruit production.
Then there is a challenge – the disciples in 10-17 say…
NKJ Matthew
So Jesus is explaining that. Then he comes back
to explain the parable in verse 18. Now the thing to understand about Matthew
13 that you don’t have in Luke 8 is that in Matthew 13 you have a series of
parables that build upon one another. There is interconnectiveness to
these parables so that the symbols in one help you understand and interpret the
next parable because he doesn’t interpret all of the parables for you. So
you are supposed to be able to apply your thought to this and put things
together. The only thing I am concerned about right now is these first two
parables.
So he starts to explain them. It is the same
explanation that we have over in Luke 8.
NKJ Matthew 13:19 "When anyone hears the word of
the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and
snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the
wayside.
NKJ Matthew
This is similar terminology to Luke 8. He is a
believer. He just had a little growth before. He doesn’t have any
sustenance. He withers up and is gone. He has no root in himself.
NKJ Matthew
NKJ Matthew
Then we have the explanation of the fourth one.
Now what I want you to note here is that on the second
soil the soil in the rock ground and the seed falls on the rocky ground and it
germinates – what is that seed producing? Is it producing the same kind
of plant that is produced in verse 23 that bears fruit? It is the same kind
of plant or is it a different kind of plant? It is the same kind of
plant. The only difference between the two is the soil. One is on good
soil; one is on soil that is rocky so it doesn’t produce any in depth root so
it doesn’t grow to maturity. But it is the same plant. Now what we
learn about this is that the plant that is being talked about here is
wheat. The point I am making is that what you have in the parable of the
soils is all related to the three that produce some kind of growth are all wheat.
You don’t see the introduction of the professing or the pseudo Christian until
the next parable.
NKJ Matthew
It is the same man sowing the same good seed.
The good seed is the gospel of the kingdom.
NKJ Matthew
Now you are introduced to another kind of
plant. This is the pseudo – Christian. Not a pseudo-
believer. Remember I talked about that a few weeks ago. We have to
keep that clear. There are people who come along and say well, there are
folks who have a false faith in Jesus or just profess to believe in
Jesus. There is a difference. We have to be very careful
here. There is a difference between saying you profess to believe in
Jesus and you profess to say you are a Christian. If I claim (that is
what profess means) to believe in Jesus; then that is a statement. Unless
I am lying I am telling the truth. If I believe in Jesus; I believe
in Jesus. If I say, “I am a Christian.” I may or may not be a
Christian. I may not understand the gospel at all. I may just
be part of a denomination that considers itself a Christian denomination.
They may be liberal. They may hold to a moral view of the atonement.
They may hold to a works salvation. They may hold to baptismal
regeneration. It is just a profession of being a Christian. But if
I say I believe in Jesus, unless I am totally self deceived and I don’t know
what I believe we have to take that to be true. They understand the
gospel and they believe in Jesus.
It is not until the second parable that we have the
introduction of the pseudo-Christian. I am not going to say
pseudo-believer. There is no category for that in the Scripture.
The only way that they are identified - the tares are identified and these are
sown by the enemy. They are not sown by the man with the good seed.
It is a different seed. So what we have in the parable of the sower is
this is all the seed of the gospel that produces all of those plants. So
those all have to be believers - the rocky soil, the thorny soil and the good
soil. It is not until the second parable that we have the introduction of
a false counterfeit plant into the field.
So what we have established so far is that not all
Christians bear fruit. Some all you have is growth. You have a
little stem production and that is about it. Those that grow to maturity
produce fruit at different levels. Some produce 100-fold, 60-fold and
30-fold. Matthew 13 and Luke 8 both emphasize this and I think if we are
honest with the vocabulary that is used there, then the three soils all
represent believers.
Now let’s look at another passage that fruit
production from a different perspective.
Now let’s look at James 1:18
NKJ James 1:18 Of His own will He brought us forth
by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
There is the active element at regeneration. God
uses intermediate means to bring about regeneration. It is the word of
truth, the message of the gospel that Jesus Christ died on the cross for us
that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. So verse 18 is
talking about regeneration. That is where salvation comes into this
discourse in this part of James. Then he shifts. That is the last
thing he says in the introduction. Then in verse 19 and 20 he starts to
make the shift to set up the rest of the book.
NKJ James
“My beloved brethren” is a term that is used to refer
to believers. He uses it many times in this epistle and he emphasizes the
fact that he is addressing them as believers, as regenerate believers.
That is the outline of the book of James. You
have an introduction in vs. 1-18. In 19 down through the end of chapter 2
you have a section that expounds on the idea of what it means to be swift to
hear. Chapter 3 deals with slow to speak and the sins of the
tongue. Then starting toward the end of chapter 3 you have a section on
mental attitude sins and on wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God.
This deals with mental attitude sins summarized by the term anger or wrath here
in verse 19.
NKJ James
That’s what we are after – production of the
righteousness of God. This isn’t righteousness for justification.
This isn’t imputed righteousness because he is already talking about the fact
that they are saved. They were justified, (let’s clarify my terminology
here).
NKJ James 1:18 Of His own will He brought us forth
by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
That’s when they are justified – when they are
regenerated. That all happened in a moment in time. It all happens
simultaneously. Regeneration and justification all take place at the
instant of faith alone in Christ alone. Now we are going to talk about
post salvation experiential righteousness as God is going to build maturity
into the life of the believer and produce experiential righteousness which is
part of the fruit of spiritual growth. We will see that as we go through.
Therefore he says…
NKJ James
I love the Old King James – super fluidity of
naughtiness. Just ask somebody what that means. Meditate on that in
your morning devotions.
It is a great term. It is difficult to translate
the Greek. It literally means the excess in your life which sin is. Sin
is an excess in your life. It is not necessary. That is the same
thing Paul says over in I Corinthians…
NKJ 1 Corinthians
In Romans 6 he says that…
NKJ Romans 6:2 Certainly not! How shall we who
died to sin live any longer in it?
Sin is superfluous now. It is an excess.
Sin in not necessary. Before you were saved you had no choice but to
sin. Everything you did came out of the sin nature. Human good came
out of the sin nature. Morality came out of the sin nature.
Everything came out of the sin nature. Some of the most evil people in
the world today are not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
or Hugo Chavez. I mean these people are evil, but they are not anything
compared to some of the folks in this country. I mean you think about some of
the folks in this country who are moral and religious. I could name you a
couple of pastors who I am convinced that they are not saved. Boy, do they
have a huge influence. They have no belief in a substitutionary atonement of
Christ, no belief in sin. One of them is out in
So God is producing righteousness in the
believer. There is a pre-condition for this though. That is what is
interesting about looking at James 1:21 because it looks in your English Bible
as if you have two imperatives there - lay aside and receive.
Right? That is what it looks like in your English. Actually in the
Greek you don’t. You have one aorist imperative which is “receive with
meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls”. Now they
are already justified. Aren’t they? Didn’t we say that
already? They are justified. So when it talks about receiving the
implanted word which is able to save your souls, it is not talking about
getting justified These folks are already justified. They are “my
beloved brethren.”
Hold your place right there and we are going to have
sword drill time. Turn over to Romans 5.
NKJ Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Right now according to that verse what are we?
Having now been justified. Just think a little bit. What are we
right now? We are justified. Present tense, right? Having now
been justified. That “now” is a big word.
“We shall be saved.” Now what tense do you think
that is? That’s future tense. Does that mean we can be justified
and not saved? That doesn’t fit American superficial evangelical
terminology which says that always asks the question, “Brother are you
saved? We don’t use the word “saved” in the same way the Bible uses the
word saved most of the time. Sometimes sozo
is a synonym for justification, but in many cases sozo
is related to the post justification life or it’s related to the future
glorification life. So you have to look at the context to find out.
In Romans the word sozo to my knowledge never
refers to justification. That is not the word Paul uses getting
righteousness and being able to enter into heaven. In his
vocabulary in Romans he will ask people, “Are you justified?”
If you are justified, then we will be saved. It
is future tense. So I just want you to understand that what I am saying
here in James 1 about “receiving the implanted word which is able to save your
souls” is we’re not talking about justification here, we are talking about what
happens now that you are justified. You have to receive the implanted
Word and that will save you. It is an aorist command. But what is
interesting in the Greek is you have something called a participle of attended
circumstance. I just love these terms.
You don’t have a clue what that means. What that
means – if you go to the grammars they will say that there are 5
characteristics you look for grammatically in a sentence structure to know if
you have a participle of attended circumstance. You got them here.
You’ve got an aorist participle that precedes an aorist imperative and a number
of other things that are going on in the text. What it basically
means is that the aorist participle lays down the conditions that must come
antecedently, preceding the mandate. In other words before you can
receive “the Word that is able to save your soul” you have to lay aside
filthiness and the excess that sin is. Does that mean that I have to quit
sinning before I can get saved? If that’s true then we are all
lost. So we are not talking about that. What we are talking about
here is that one little word that we use a lot - confession. It is
confession. It is the same structure as a matter of fact that you have
over in I Peter 2:1. In I Peter 2:1 you have the command…
NKJ 1 Peter 2:1 Therefore, laying aside all malice,
all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
It is the same word. It is like taking off an
old set of dirty clothes.
NKJ 1 Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire the pure
milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
Before you can desire the sincere milk of the Word and
grow by it, what do you have to do? You have to go through that process
of cleansing from sin which comes as a result of confession. I John 1:9.
So you see all of those ties together. Before you can start receiving the
Word implanted which is able to deliver us. Remember the three stages of
sanctification or three stages of salvation. We are saved from the
penalty of sin when we put our faith alone in Christ alone. We are saved
from the power of sin during our Christian life. We are saved from the
presence of sin and glorification. What did I say happens during
sanctification? We are saved from the power of sin so that since we died
to sin we don’t have to obey sin anymore. That is Romans 6. So
James
NKJ John
How do I get that life? You get that life by
being cleansed from sin and then receiving the implanted word which is able to
save you life which is able to save you from the power of sin on a day-to-day
basis. Then he goes on to develop from verse 23 on the emphasis on
hearing the Word.
NKJ James
By doer, he means applier. You come to Bible
class and you hear you are to pray without ceasing. You go home and
you don’t pray for three weeks. Have you been applying the Word?
No. You see you are a hearer and not a doer. That is what it means doer
is in Christian service. Doing is application of the Word of God.
So this is where we see the production of fruit coming in at that point.
In the implanted word in verse 21 it is the seed that grows up and produces
fruit. It is that same imagery that is used there that buys into that
whole fruit production metaphor that we find throughout Scripture. Now
what are some other passages that have to do with fruit production?
Let’s look at a couple of them.
NKJ Hebrews
This isn’t legalism. Legalism says that by doing
good, by being moral we please God and gain His approbation. That’s not
what this is talking about. This is talking about that within the context
of divine discipline in the life of the believer; the believer learns to be
obedient, to abide in Christ and to be filled with the Spirit. As you take
in the Word of God and let the Word of God abide in you, then it produces
fruit. Part of that fruit it produces is personal evangelism,
right? (I just wanted to see if anybody was listening.) It is
righteousness. This is experiential righteousness. This isn’t imputed
righteousness. So then we have other verses that back this up. For
example…
NKJ Colossians
This is obviously post salvation.
Isn’t that an interesting word? It just hit me
- increasing in knowledge of God. I wonder how many Christians
there are that this year can say they know more about God and they know God
better than they did a year ago. That is part of growth. It has a
consequence of producing fruit in divine good.
NKJ Philippians
NKJ Philippians
The flip side of that is you don’t approve the things
that are not excellent.
I remember years ago hearing one of my seminary
professors saying to us as pastors, “Men the biggest challenge that you are
going to face as pastors is not choosing between the good and the sinful. It is
going to be between the good and the excellent.”
Don’t get distracted by things that are fine and fun
and good that keep you from the pursuit of the excellent in your Christian
life. That is what Paul is saying here.
It is experiential righteousness. It is divine
good and it is living a life that is consistent with the righteous standards of
God. He sets out the protocols for living the Christian life throughout
the New Testament. That defines his standards – living consistent with
those standards – standards for the royal family of God.
Back to James. We have come full circle.
NKJ James
The gospel again is pictured as a seed. As it
grows it matures. As it is watered and fertilized; its fruit is
righteousness. It sort of gives us a framework in talking about
fruit.
Now let’s go to another key passage on fruit.
Before we can get to Galatians 5 which will tie it all together, we need to
look at Ephesians 5. So what we have done is tie John 15, Luke 8, James
1, and now Ephesians 5 and then Galatians 5. These are the critical
passages.
Now remember Ephesians is Paul’s classic concise
explanation of the church and the Church Age. Ephesians is a great book
that one day we will get to. It’s so easy to understand because the first
three chapters deal with doctrine. This is who God is and what He has
done for you in salvation. Then the last three chapters are in light of
the doctrine this is what you do. It’s almost like a sermon. When
we take two years to get through the first three chapters, some how we forget
how the last three chapters relate because we are dealing with all of this
great doctrine in the first three chapters. The doctrine always leads to
the real practical stuff. The practical stuff is good. A lot of people
want to jump there, but you can’t understand what it means to love one another,
you can’t understand what it means for husbands to love their wives and wives
to submit to your husbands if you don’t think in the framework of the first
tree chapters. These wonderful, practical commands that relate to
husbands, wives, parents, children that come in the 5th chapter are
based on an understanding of the first three chapters. If you don’t
understand that doctrinal foundation, then you end up (which is what happens in
too many churches today) preaching too many “how to” sermons on how to have a
good marriage, how to keep your checkbook balanced, how to raise good
kids. It’s nice stuff. It’s not wrong stuff. But guess
what. Because it is divorced from the doctrinal foundation, it ends up
being nothing more than preaching morality. People don’t understand
why they are doing what they are doing any more they are just doing moral
things. Then end up trying to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps
in their spiritual lives. So we will go to Ephesians 5 which is the
second chapter of the application section.
He starts to remind them of their position in verse 8
so he can challenge them to application after that.
NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you
are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
What is he talking about here? What we call
positional truth – our position in Christ. Before we were justified, we
were children of darkness. We were in the
NAS Colossians
So when he says “you were once darkness”, this is what
characterized you as an unbeliever. You were in darkness no matter how
smart you were, no matter how high your IQ was, no matter how moral you were,
you were in darkness. But now you are light in the Lord,
positionally.
Then he has a command. Walk is a present
imperative. This is to characterize your life as standard operating
procedure.
Some of you may have used this example when you were a
parent or maybe you heard it when you were a kid.
Your father said, “You are a member of this family and
if you are going to be a member of this family you are not going to act like
that. You are going to act like this.”
That is what Paul is saying here. Now you are
light in the Lord. You are a member of the royal family. That means
you have to live a certain way. You can’t live like you did before
because there has been a shift that has taken place. You have been
transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved
Son. So you can’t live like you used to live because you are not who you
used to be. You are somebody new. You are children of light, so
walk as children o f light.
I want you to notice the contrast. I will
come back to verse 9 in just a minute. I have to set you up for
something. We have this juxtaposition between light and darkness –
absolute states. You were once darkness. Now you are light.
Walk as light, not as darkness.
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
So there is a heavy emphasis all through this section
on light.
Now somewhere back in the late 200’s (late third
century AD) a textual variant (that means another word) slipped into the
text. So in some manuscripts we find “for the fruit of the light”
in verse 9 “is in all goodness, righteousness and truth”. But the
majority of documents have Spirit there. Three of the eunseals
(SP? )(some of the oldest documents) support one another that the reading
should be “light” and not spirit. I call them the big four because there
are four of the oldest manuscripts. If they all agree then people
who believe oldest is right go with that. But it is a split witness –
three against one. One of the oldies agrees with the majority text that
the reading here should be Spirit and not light.
People who look at things like this have various
rules. One of the rules is that you should take the harder reading. It
seems to me that the reading that would be harder here would be Spirit because
light is used in juxtaposition to all the way through it would be easy to see
how a scribe would come along and say well it would make more sense fruit of
the light rather than fruit of the Spirit. I am just going to write that
in the margin. Then the next thing you know it is copied in. So I
believe that as you have in the King James and New King James which is based on
the TR but the TR is related to the majority text that it is fruit of the
Spirit here. But in either case they are used synonymously in many
places in Scripture so we shouldn’t get caught up one way or the other.
This production of the Spirit which is a production of walking in the light is
defined as goodness (divine good) intrinsic good, righteousness and truth –
veracity and integrity. This is what is produced when the believer is
walking in the light. Of course if the believer is walking in the light
he also walking by the Spirit and abiding in Christ. All of these terms for
walking are synonymous to one another. What we see here in Ephesian 5 is
this juxtaposition between two absolute conditions - you are either in the light
or in darkness. You are either foolish or you are wise.
Skip down to verse 15.
NKJ Ephesians
You see you are either walking as fools or walking as
wise. You can’t be a little bit of both. You have a tendency today
from a lot of people to say it is done a little bit by the Spirit and a little
bit by the flesh. But I don’t believe that. It is either one or the
other.
Galatians 5 makes it very clear. We will see
that next time.
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
It’s an instrumental dative there indicating that the
means of spirituality is going to be in one case is wine and in the other case
is spirit. You will mostly hear people talk about when you are under the
influence of alcohol it controls you. We talk about influence or
control. I think these are confusing terms. Control would indicate
that you don’t have any volition. Influence is a better term, but the
emphasis here is on the instrumentality. In other words you are using
wine to get spiritual. That is what was happening in Ephesus.
One of the gods that they worshipped in
I can say, “Fill my coffee cup with coffee.”
I use the English preposition with. The content
of filling is the coffee.
Or I can say, “Fill up my mug with that pitcher.”
Then the pitcher is the means of filling it.
When you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit you have got all the Holy Spirit you
are ever going to get at the instant of salvation. You don’t get
anymore. You don’t get filled up with any more. But you are either
going to be filled up with something by the Spirit or you are not. Look
at the result.
You are filled by means of the Spirit. What are
the results?
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
Then it talks about wives submitting to your husbands,
husbands loving their wives and fathers raising up your children.
Flip over to the parallel book which is Colossians.
The command there is…
NKJ Colossians
What are the results?
Have we heard that before? Yeah, we just heard
it. It is the result of being filled by means of the Spirit.
Didn’t we just hear that? Yeah we just heard
that. It is the result of being filled with the Spirit.
Wait a minute. Here it is the result of letting
the word of Christ dwelling in you. If A produces X behavior and B also
produces X behavior, there has to be a relationship between A and B. In
other words the filling by means of the Spirit is talking about one
aspect. The letting the word of Christ dwell in you is the other
aspect. The Holy Spirit fills you with something. You are filled by
means of something, but what are you filled with? You are filled
with the Word of God. So when we are in right relationship to the Holy Spirit,
the dynamic, the sanctification dynamic, that is filling us with His word is
operational. As we abide in Christ and walk by the Spirit it produces
fruit, but when we sin and we grieve and quench the Spirit it stifles that
ministry and there is no filling and growing. He is not taking the
Word and filling our lives with it. So there is no growth and no fruit
production. That brings us up to Galatians 5.
I will go over this again next week because it is so
important and critical to understand how these passages all fit together.
Then we will wrap up this side trail on fruit production up in Galatians
5.